The Grave on the Steppe
The Penal Colony Karaganda in the 1930s
Meinhard Stark, Wladislaw Hedeler
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
The “correctional labour camp” in Karaganda, Kazakhstan, was one of the Gulag’s largest camp complexes. From 1930 to 1959, 800,000 inmates performed forced labour there. They cultivated the barren land and created the preconditions for the creation of one of the largest coal, manganese and copper mining areas within the USSR. Many inmates met their death in this camp. At first, many Kazakhs who resisted expulsion from their pastures died there as well. The camp archive’s administration and prison files as well as the personal memoirs of survivors provide insight into the camp’s oppressive living and working conditions, the chaos of its construction as well as its organisation, structure and production.
(Osteuropa 8-9/2007, pp. 589–604)